There wasn’t any loud music blaring or players bouncing around celebrating inside the locker room.

That’s because the Indiana Pacers only took one step, albeit a much needed one, when they beat the Dallas Mavericks 103-83 at Bankers Life Fieldhouse on Friday night.

The Pacers know they still have a lot of work to do. They simply needed something to get them jump started after a handful of close defeats and a blowout loss to Milwaukee two nights earlier.

“I just thought we played a little harder, played a little smarter and did what we had to in terms of our execution,” Pacers forward David West said. “We can’t overreact. We have to continue to get better. Obviously we are not where we want to be. We have to continue to improve. That has to be our mindset.”

Coach Frank Vogel knew change was necessary, too. That’s why when the Pacers took the court for their shootaround Friday morning he surprised his players by scrapping the offensive system that wasn’t working during the first nine games and implementing a system that pushes the tempo and has constant ball movement.

A 60-minute practice session provided the Pacers with their second highest point total of the season, a season low in turnovers and all five starters scoring in double figures.

“This could be a changing factor with our team,” Pacers swingman Paul George said. “It’s a huge relief. We let a lot of games go. It was good to come out early and jump on them.”

Vogel had the change the offense because too often there was more standing around and watching instead of cutting and moving.

That’s fine if you have a Kevin Durant or LeBron James on your roster to carry you.

The Pacers don’t have a player that can create his own shot. They have to use a team approach, and in order for that to work there has to be trust in one another.

“We talked about re-establishing a belief in ourselves as a basketball team, belief in ourselves individually that we’re capable of doing great things,” Vogel said. “And continue to believe in teammates that are struggling and that’s an important element in getting yourself out of a rut.

“Getting a team out of a rut is to continue to trust that we have good players on this team that when the ball moves and we’re sharing it and we’re playing for each other that we’re going to be pretty good.”

That trust was on display in the third quarter when the Pacers blew the game open.

Guard Lance Stephenson scored 10 of his 12 points in the third quarter to help the Pacers overcome a halftime deficit.

Stephenson made both of his 3-pointers during the quarter when West and George Hill passed up shots to make the extra pass to get an even better shot.

Stephenson’s second 3-pointer gave the Pacers a 14-point lead and had him backpedaling down the court blowing on his three fingers.

The Pacers outscored the Mavericks 28-18 in the third quarter and eventually led by as many as 22 points in the fourth quarter.

The Pacers also got a lift from Sam Young off the bench because his teammates believed in him to make shots.

Young, who has had trouble passing the ball and making shots beyond five feet of the basket, scored 14 points on 6-of-11 shooting in 21 minutes.

“(The new offense) opens up the door for a lot of our players to be creative and just play basketball,” Hill said. “I think in our last offense we were thinking too much, ball wasn’t moving, staying on one side of the floor. This new offense demands for the ball to move from side to side. You have to tip your hat to the coaching staff.”

http://www.indystar.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2012211170316

Seeing this and how much better the offense looked, I'm already feeling a lot better about Vogel and the rest of this season.

cdash

11-17-2012, 01:13 PM

Oh, so when we say new offense, we mean he actually installed an offense.

McKeyFan

11-17-2012, 01:27 PM

Props to Vogel for making some things happen. Still need to see the change over a few games, but 1-0 and a healthy victory since our Milwaukee drubbing sure beats 0-1.

Brad8888

11-17-2012, 01:29 PM

Not only was an offense installed, but it happened in one shootaround the morning of the game. So much for it taking an entire preseason and lots of practice time to install a change of offense. Coaches who can't or won't do so simply are either stubborn or inept, or both.

I suspect that most players have been brought up to understand ball movement, but when told to create their own shot they frequently forget to look for anybody else.

Ultimately, though, this calls for at least a single :bananadan

and a :eyebrow2: as to why it took this long to figure this out when virtually every poster here recognized the issue several games ago.

imawhat

11-17-2012, 01:35 PM

The ball and player movement were a lot better last night, though there will still moments where it stalled. We've got a long way to go and lots of other things to work on, but we're on the right track.

It's amazing how this happens to every team at the beginning of every season. Players pick up really bad habits in the offseason from playing pickup games. It usually takes until mid-December for offenses to start gelling again.

Remember when the Pacers looked good at the beginning of the season under O'Brien? It's because we were outworking teams that weren't sharp offensively. Then when offenses started to gel we'd go on a long losing streak as our hard play was no longer enough to overcome good execution. That's exactly what I see happening to the Bobcats this season.

Also, as teams start executing, players who play better in chaos, like Lance and Tyler, will have to adjust to continue their higher level of play. That's something to keep in mind.

vnzla81

11-17-2012, 03:38 PM

I don't understand why it took a year plus to realize that the offense needed to change :confused:

I don't buy the bs excuse of "our previous offense was based on Danny Granger" either, all this is telling me is that for some reason Vogel has been as stubborn as the previous coach and only changed the offense because he felt the pressure, it was either change the offense and start winning or you are fired.

Peck

11-17-2012, 03:57 PM

I don't understand why it took a year plus to realize that the offense needed to change :confused:

I don't buy the bs excuse of "our previous offense was based on Danny Granger" either, all this is telling me is that for some reason Vogel has been as stubborn as the previous coach and only changed the offense because he felt the pressure, it was either change the offense and start winning or you are fired.

One vast difference between Vogel & Satan. Frank was able and willing to change in the face of the obvious and Satan was not.

I'm glad he's making adjustments. It's about time! Sounds like the right idea, as long as it's more than three or four plays. Hopefully this will show the players that they too can do more than make excuses.

Edit: Does Mr Wells watch the Pacers? There are two guys that can create their own shots. Our starting 1 & 2.

vnzla81

11-17-2012, 04:10 PM

One vast difference between Vogel & Satan. Frank was able and willing to change in the face of the obvious and Satan was not.

Well Satan changed for few games, remember when he fooled everybody but me? yeah I'm patting my own back again :-p

MaHa3000

11-17-2012, 04:21 PM

Didn't Vogel just go back to the Offensive system that we ran last year and 86 the new offence he was trying to implement this year? That's what I thought Quinn Buckner was saying during last nights broadcast.

Since86

11-17-2012, 04:24 PM

I don't understand why it took a year plus to realize that the offense needed to change :confused:

Guess you missed the part where they said that the offensive changes were just going back to some of last years stuff, with new wrinkles, but that the overall approach was to go back to the basics.

Coach Frank Vogel went back to the basics in his offense, calling fewer plays and allowing his players more freedom to move and react to the defense. It resulted in a 103-83 win over Dallas at Bankers Life Fieldhouse that was the Pacers' first double-figure win of the season and offered the first glimmer of hope that Danny Granger's absence won't send them reeling back into lottery world.

"We're getting back to the fundamentals of our system that we've gotten away from," he said, speaking confidently and deliberately. "We're going to implement a change that can happen immediately in terms of more flow in our offense.

"It's a subtle change we're putting in that can happen immediately. We know execution will take time, but the force and speed with which we play and the movement we should exhibit should happen right away."

http://www.nba.com/pacers/news/getting-back-basics

I find it funny that some posters who said the Pacers needed to change some things are embracing last night, when last night was just more like last season. There wasn't much difference in what they were trying to do, but there was a whole lot of difference in how they attacked doing it. Cuts last night were with purpose. Beginning the season they were slow and weren't focused on clearing space, or trying to free themselves up if it was a designed cut to get offense.

It's been pointed out that Dallas didn't double team. That's part of it, but the other part is that teams were waiting to double when the post players put the ball on the ground. Last night, there was no time to wait. The pass was being made, and then the offensive player was making a decision right away and making a move. It didn't allow the double team to ever get in position to be effective.

It's amazing how the same system looks different depending on how the players execute it.

cdash

11-17-2012, 04:27 PM

Well Satan changed for few games, remember when he fooled everybody but me? yeah I'm patting my own back again :-p

Yeah, that never happened.

BlueCollarColts

11-17-2012, 04:27 PM

I agree, George Hill and David West were much better last night than in recent nights, just think West's 16 foot jumper is still off and he only scored 15 points he should have scored 24. Sam Young was a good pick up if he can keep making open shots. Gerald Green has a good offensive game, we need him to shoot more, he will be a 10 ppg guy for us this year. Hibbert FINALLY had a good game!!!!!!!!!

vnzla81

11-17-2012, 04:36 PM

Yeah, that never happened.

Yes it did, just ask Peck and whoever made the promise to give the clown the benefit of the doubt for some games(20+ games I think) the clown promised that he was going to change, there was even an interview of the clown with Hicks and Gnome telling them how much he was going to use Hibbert down low.

MillerTime

11-17-2012, 05:39 PM

So this is not Smash Mouth??????????

Sookie

11-17-2012, 05:58 PM

I saw a lot of Hill giving up the ball early, and creating plays off the ball (with player movement, where he would receive it back again.) If that's a new change, it's likely a good one. It allows Hill to do things he's good at. Overall though, there wasn't a pretty offense..they just looked more active.

Steagles

11-17-2012, 06:47 PM

I'm ecstatic he said '"eff it" to what didn't work and replaced it. Now he just needs to learn to draw up plays at the end of the game.

ilive4sports

11-17-2012, 07:26 PM

I don't think this is a "new" offense really. I remember a lot of talk about the more up tempo offense last year and its what we wanted to do against Miami as well. Our starting 5 was very good at pushing the ball, which takes it out of Hibberts hand more, and right now thats a good thing as he is struggling.

Seems like this offense the players feel a bit more free to just go and score rather than making another pass. Less thinking, more playing.

John Hollinger pointed it out too in his blog last week about what's wrong with the Pacers. I think Vogel is a good young coach and he's not too proud to change things up if it's not working. I'm thankful for that.

CableKC

11-17-2012, 08:28 PM

Does this mean that Vogel will have to run the uninstall program to downgrade the offense when Granger returns?

beast23

11-17-2012, 09:23 PM

So this is not Smash Mouth??????????
Why don't we just switch from smash mouth to potty mouth. If we can't force our will on the opponent, we can at least give them an earful about it. We can out-cuss them.

As for last night's game, it was a welcome change. With the possible exception of PF, I believe we have an athletic advantage over most opponents at the other positions on the floor. And at PF, we have a pretty decent strength advantage over most opponents. I think last night's game showed success in using those advantages.

If nothing else, basketball is a pretty simple game where you simply use what you have. It was nice to see a visit from Mr Obvious resulting in our finally putting the use of our advantages into practice.

vnzla81

11-17-2012, 09:45 PM

So this is not Smash Mouth??????????

Hopefully they stop with the "smashmouth" bs.

ChicagoJ

11-18-2012, 06:25 PM

Does this mean that Vogel will have to run the uninstall program to downgrade the offense when Granger returns?

I listened to Mark and Austin today while I was outside, so I didn't exactly watch the Garden debacle. But they seemed to think that the offense was already uninstalled over the weekend. Austin sounded like a broken record - "yet another bad possession where they never got the ball with 15 feet of the basket and settled for a bad shot early in the shot clock."

I'm not going to go back and watch the mess that happened today. Heard enough on the radio to know what it looked like.

Naptown_Seth

11-18-2012, 08:00 PM

Jay, at one point I think the Pacers took 3 trips in a row where the ball barely moved and then someone just jacked up a 3. There were A LOT of long jumpers and almost no drives to the rim.

I mean there were drives into rim traffic with nowhere to go, but no pass-cut-pass-rotate-pass-cut-pass-open layup drives to the rim.

Oddly one of the plays that was a decent drive featured Paul going to the rim for the open layup and at the last second handing it over to Roy who then took and made a shot over 2 defenders. Very weird and indicative of the general confusion we have come to see every game.

They kept getting themselves trapped and looked confused about where and how to rotate the ball out of double teams. And often it wasn't the guy being doubled, but the guys around him looking like they had no idea that a double would come or that they should do something to get open.

ONE GUY cuts nicely without the ball and without a set play - Sam Young. He'll run a lane or a baseline just to keep his man from settling in and ruining the space. But the rest of the guys? I saw more guys almost running into each other going to the same spot on the court, or coming right into the ball handler and bringing their man right to the easy trap.

Confused. Like Isiah had the Quick, Vogel has the Confused.

He's gotta get this worked out because it's just unwatchable. At least give me 40 minutes of flow and only 8 minutes of struggles that cost you the game if you must lose.

MikeDC

11-18-2012, 11:36 PM

I guess I'll be the jerk who says it, but I don't understand how throwing out the offensive system you've worked hard to get everyone to buy into after only a few games is a trust building exercise. I see it as exactly the opposite. It's an admission the players didn't trust the system and the coach didn't trust the players to get the system. Now, maybe the coach is right about that, and the players weren't going to get the system, and thus it needed to change, but there's no getting around the fact that it's a panic move and a big-time failure that things got to this point.